July 2019

Life in Sirajganj Day 2

Posted on July 16, 2019
in Blogs
by Ioana Dobrescu

by Tamanna Akter   So far, Sirajganj has never failed to amaze team Wetskills. The hide and seek between sun and rain helped us to capture the perfect nature of rainy season in Bangladesh. In Day 1, the whole team visited the sites together, in the next they each group went to visit the site of their convenience. Here we are, team Fixzles could not be happier to understand the city, the people and the environment. So we took a local transport and tried to get acquainted with the local people. Fig1. How simple life is in Sirajganj   The first impression of Sirajganj was people are very generous! Our first destination was the China Embankment, we decided to talk to people living near the river. I was little nervous how people will react when I will talk about a very sensitive issue. I was surprised to find the spontaneous participation of people in the...

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City of River

Posted on July 16, 2019
in Wetskills Bangladesh
by Ioana Dobrescu

By Fairooz Tasnim Tori   After a long tiring journey at previous day, Sirajganj welcome us with banquet of green and blue serenity. The day was planned to visit the flood related project areas of Sirajganj. At first we went to nearby village to visit the floating seed bed which has been mainly designed to protect the crop during flood. Most of the low lands of the village were submerged by the rain water. The little children were swimming and playing in those areas. The whole road work as embankment for the village. In one part of the road geo soil bag was used as embankment.     A floating house and saniproofing (a floating sanitary latrine) has been made in the village as a part of CORE project. This flood friendly unit was floating in water logged area. A retrofit house which has floating floor has also been made for experimental purpose. Finally we visit...

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Jackfruit and case work

Posted on July 16, 2019
in Wetskills Bangladesh
by Ioana Dobrescu

by Meng Hsuan Tsai   During the last two days of Wetskills, many participants have worked on their own case studies and the pitch. In the middle of the day, we tried the local jackfruits and Cordia dichotomas. William and Tamanna opened the jackfruit  without oil rubbing on their hands and get sticky, which makes their handling a bit inconvenient. Even though the fruit smells like rotting onion but I really like the taste. From the Wetskills’s project made me think. We went to the case study area, Sirajganj, to investigate the local condition and then back to BUET in Dhaka. I found out that working with the local students was the fun part. Nevertheless, tomorrow will be my last day in Bangladesh. I imagine the presentation will have a big success....

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When cultural diversity met the natural diversity

Posted on July 16, 2019
in Wetskills Bangladesh
by Ioana Dobrescu

By Noshin Saiyara   From the idea of thinking independently together Wetskills introduced us to the wide range of diversity. May this be in culture or in nature. Joining Wetskills was all about getting an opportunity to see this diversity up close and travelling to Sirajgonj with people from different culture was something which I was really looking forward to. 7th July was the last day of the tour. The dream project “The Amphibious House” was inaugurated.     The boat journey to reach the site with people of different cultures who never experienced that before was a great fun and the nature invited our foreign guests with a beautiful rain. Having a boat ride in the rain was a mesmerizing experience. Then a short but very informative discussion session happened in the Polytechnic Institute followed by a lunch party together.   And as they all says all good things come to an end very quickly. This journey...

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Reflections on Sirajganj

Posted on July 16, 2019
in Wetskills Bangladesh
by Ioana Dobrescu

by Saskia van Otterloo   Our fieldtrip started with a chaotic train trip to Sirajganj from Dhaka, on the afternoon of the 4th of July. Many of the Dutch had been sick with food poisoning. The group met at one of the three stations in Dhaka, jumped on the train and the 5 hour journey began. We had natural airconditioning on the way by opening the windows. This also allowed us to see the sights as we left the big city for our smaller site in the country. We arrived at Siranjganj station after dark and there were CNG's waiting for us to take us to the SHARP Guesthouse. SHARP is an NGO that is active in the city and it runs a school. We had some dinner and got into bed as it was quite late. The next morning we woke up to breakfast in one of the classrooms and spent the morning...

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Memory zone

Posted on July 9, 2019
in Wetskills Bangladesh
by Ioana Dobrescu

By Zahrun Zannat   Water and peoples, when you put them together amazing things start to happen. And with the welcoming rain it got more interesting in Bangladesh on the very first day.   It is not an event to just win any case rather it is about mixing of cultures from different countries, sharing their experiences. On the first day of event we started to get to know each other through some charming activities like tuktuk race, site visiting etc which ended with a great dinner. Speed dating started on second day with experts. There were so many questions from the participants and answers as well as valuable suggestions from experts. We learned to gain knowledge to see the problem from different perspectives within a very short time. Third day Morning started through preparing the process action plan. Afternoon got too much exciting with the drone flying. Main purpose of it to do pilot testing cause it is gonna be used later to...

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A big planning day

Posted on July 8, 2019
in Wetskills Bangladesh
by Ioana Dobrescu

  by Nazeat Ameen Iqra   We all woke up this morning thinking we had lots to do today. Yesterday we submitted our process action plan so we needed to work on this. Also we are going to Sirajganj tomorrow so need to discuss what to do there and after coming back to Dhaka too. The process action planned was reviewed and Nynke assisted us to make understand what we were missing in plan and how to do them properly. Niyenke showed us how to make the posters, what to put and what not. She also showed how to pitch a poster. She mentioned what are the rules and how to attract the audience. It was a long fun day....

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Relativity

Posted on July 8, 2019
in Blogs, Wetskills Bangladesh
by Ioana Dobrescu

By M. Rasheduzzaman (Rafi)   “Where is it? Is it above the clouds or fainted over by seeing the beauty of this city? From which direction it is coming? Who can see it first?” Those were the questions that came to our minds when we saw a flying drone for the first time in our life so closely.   One explanation of Einstein’s relativity theory: “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.” Day three of wetskills Bangladesh 2019 was the proof of Albert Einstein’s theory. It was started with work on process action plan. The deadline for submitting the process action plan was by 3 PM. It was decided that the drone will be flown in the afternoon after submitting the action plan of our cases. On...

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BrainHurricane: A very fruitful process for understanding any problem within a short time

Posted on July 8, 2019
in Blogs, Wetskills Bangladesh
by Ioana Dobrescu

By A.K. Azad   BrainHurricane event is a totally new approach to me. But it’s very interesting. At first, I had no interest in it. But when the 1st discussion was over I realize that me, as well as my group, got many new things within 12 minutes. Then my curiosity was increased. In a 2nd discussion, I started to ask more question. We asked about the study area, about the local people’s lifestyle, livelihood, their emotion, weak point, strong zone, political influence, etc. As we have a very short time to a study about study area characteristics, geology, flood type, exposure percentage, and we have a limited time to read out the related case study to know the possible method and solutions, so we had got many examples of related case studies, probable approach of working method, convincing process of local people, and the possible solutions of the problem. Dr. Amin...

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Wet inauguration of Wetskills Bangladesh

Posted on July 2, 2019
in Wetskills Bangladesh, Wetskills Bangladesh 2019
by Ioana Dobrescu

By Tanvir Arafat   Nature tried to harmonize with the nomenclature as Heavens were open to welcome Wetskills Bangladesh.   After the formal introductions, it was time for a get to know phase which came out to be truly charming. We formed a line based on our height followed by a random photo selection session where everyone had to pick and describe their chosen one.   After lunch, we took “Tuktuk” which is a 3-wheeler passenger vehicle to visit HBRI (House and Building Research Institute) at Darussalam.     We visited the “Floating house” and “Lift house” which is made of polystyrene and bamboo respectively. We were also informed of their sustainability in adverse conditions. Then rain arrived again with lightning to make the Wetskills team wet. When we were waiting for clear sky, some local child made our time enjoyable by doing some childish things. It took a little while to stop raining and we had the opportunity...

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Wetskills is an independent Foundation based in The Netherlands. Wetskills is part of the Human Capital Agenda of the Dutch water sector. KNW Waternetwerk, the Royal Netherlands Water Network, is the (financial) administrator for Wetskills Foundation.

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